


They'll Heal Our Scars

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [89]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Comfort Sex, F/M, John's Reichenbach Feels, Nightmares, Sherlock Plays the Violin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 03:33:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1590146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time John has a nightmare while sharing a bed with Mary, it's not about Afghanistan. It's one of the other kind. <em>Sometimes I dream of when he fell.</em> So she understands when he has to go downstairs without her, to make sure Sherlock is all right.</p><p>It's still not so long since he came home, but even with the nightmare nights it's going to be all right. They believe that. They won their war and they are building a new life now, John and Sherlock, and these new friends they've made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They'll Heal Our Scars

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a lyric from Not in Haste by Mumford and Sons.
> 
> This story started out as something else, but it knew what it wanted to say, so Iet it. Possibly it rambles a bit. It's late. But it's done, and this is how it wanted to tell itself. Writing. It's a funny game.

Excellent sex wasn’t the only reason, or even the best reason, Mary and John were so giddily in love. They just enjoyed being together, talking and exploring London and each other’s histories and ways of thinking. It was just as well, because Mary and John’s timing wasn’t always perfect for their sex lives. She’d get back to London just as her menstrual cycle kicked in; or she’d catch one of the respiratory infections she was prone to in that great, damp city. Or John and Sherlock would be flat out – and possibly out of town – on a case, or he’d be drop-dead tired at the conclusion of one.

And sometimes she was there on a nightmare night.

When it was just John and Sherlock at Baker Street, they’d know when it was going to be a bad night, or seek out each other in the dark hours: playing music to accompany their sleeplessness, or curling up side by side on Sherlock’s large bed just for each to know for certain that the other was there, was home, was safe.

John had warned Mary about his nightmares early, before they’d even slept together the first time. He’d said that if they happened, she should only try to talk to him, not to touch him. If he was restless, it was probably one of the Afghanistan nightmares, and she should get out of bed completely and talk to him from the doorway until he was properly awake. He wouldn’t forgive himself if he hurt her, lashing out, before he realised who she was, and that she was no danger. Mary promised him she’d be careful, and follow the drill.

It was months before it happened, though. And it wasn’t a dream of Afghanistan that woke him. It was one of the other kind.

John and Sherlock were in the middle of a difficult case when Mary and Nirupa flew back in from their water project in Ecuador. It was therefore a while before they could see each other: a while that on the case included a near miss with a snapped bridge cable while Sherlock pursued the art-thief-come-skin-collector through a network of canals, Sherlock’s subsequent short fall that turned out to be uneventful but gave John a literally heart-hurting fright and John nearly coming a cropper on the collector’s blade, saved mainly by parrying the blow with an oar and Sherlock clouting the vile little shit with a coil of thick rope.

The case successfully concluded, both men were laughing about their close calls and Sherlock’s cleverness in solving the whole business when they finally met up with Mary and Nirupa for dinner at Angelo’s and shared the whole adventure with them.

But Sherlock knew their tells, his and John’s. This was not going to be a good night. John’s reaction to Sherlock’s slip from the bridge was an obvious trigger but there’d been something about McCauley’s crawling voice too. Not an accent but a tone. Reminiscent of…  Sherlock had to consider it closely, to find and follow the thread to the memory.

_I'll make you into shoes._

Oh. Reminiscent of _him._

“You all right?” Nirupa asked him.

Sherlock blinked. “Yes. Fine. Why?”

Nirupa shrugged. “You looked… haunted.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Nirupa shrugged. She was getting to know Sherlock better now, and the brusqueness he used as deflection. She had a little of that of her own, and it didn’t bother her when Sherlock did it too. Especially when she saw how he was watching John with concern. She started to say something, then thought better of it. (In later years, they were comfortable enough that she could ask, and he might answer, but that time wasn’t yet.)

“It looks like you’ll be seeing Mary at breakfast,” she said instead, with an indulgent smile. John and Mary rather charmingly thought that no-one knew they were playing footsies under the table.

“Apparently so.”  Sherlock frowned.

“Meet you at Speedy’s for brunch?” Nirupa suggested.

“Hmm. What? Yes. Can you bring that book?”

“ _Linguistic Disorders and Pathologies: An International Handbook_?”

“That’s the chap.”

“In English or the Spanish translation?”

“Now you’re just showing off.” But he grinned at her, and she grinned back, because it turned out that on many levels, Sherlock and Nirupa understood each other very well already. “Both, of course.”

Nirupa burst into a peel of laughter, rose and bid good night to Mary and John, to Angelo, and to the cute waitress she’d been flirting with on and off for some weeks now.

Sherlock, John and Mary – holding John’s hand and pressed happily close to his side – walked back to Baker Street, said their goodnights in the living room and Mary went upstairs with John.

Sherlock stood in the living room a moment longer, considering the options, then walked quietly off to his own room. Where he stared at his bed and sighed at it. There didn’t seem much point. He wasn’t tired, and there were all the signs that sleep would be awful if he tried. Flashes of memory and sound, a mélange of the last two days and days long past, collided in his head.

_I'll make you into shoes._

Damn.

*

John stripped down to nothing but then pulled on a pair of pyjama pants, giving the top over to Mary. She looked cute in his pyjama shirt, he thought, and told her so. She turned to wiggle her bare bottom – peeking out below the hem she lifted with her fingers. He patted her arse fondly and they kissed for a while, but it never moved beyond sweet affection. Certainly nothing stirred beneath his cotton drawstrings.

In bed, they cuddled up close, but John was content to burrow his nose into her dark hair and breathe in the scent of her.

“I’m not much in the mood, sorry, sweetheart. Bugger of a day and I’m knackered.”

Mary wriggled closer to him, wrapping an arm across his ribs and kissing his chest. “This is nice,” she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice, “I miss this too. I like sleeping next to you.”

John kissed the crown of her head. “Me too.”

*

John woke hours later, heart pounding, a scream caught in his throat, his feet kicking against a dream of sucking quicksand that dragged his feet towards hell, wouldn’t let him move, and dizzy from the terror and grief of _watching him fall, fall, fall_.

“John? Babe, are you all right?” A sleepy voice near his ear. She sounded familiar, but the words made no sense.

John lay panting on the bed, staring at the ceiling, hearing but not understanding.

“John?”

He turned his head towards the sound and saw the silhouette. M-m-mary? Yes. Mary. Mary. Sweet and sexy and smart and bright and so many things but not, but not, but not...

“I’ll be right back.” John lurched upright, out of bed.

“John? What’s wrong?” Mary's voice was stronger now, clearer, as she woke up fully.

“I…”

“Oh god, sorry. Stupid of me. You told me about the nightmares. I’m sorry. What can I do?”

“Nothing. Nothing. I…” John’s eyes darted to the closed bedroom door, “I just need to…” He swallowed. “Get some water.”

John had only briefly mentioned the other type of nightmare. _Sometimes I dream of when he fell._ He hadn’t wanted to dwell on that at the time, but now he looked so worried, so unsettled, like he needed to run, to go looking for something. Someone. Mary would have to have been an idiot to not know who he needed to go looking for.

So Mary said, “Okay.” And she smiled instead of speaking her understanding.

John opened the door and tried to make himself walk at a normal pace, but it was a march, brisk and determined and focused. Down the stairs. Into the living room. Through the kitchen. To Sherlock’s door. Ajar.

He pushed at it with his fingertips, just to look. To check. To see.

Sherlock was sitting up in bed, the light of his open computer casting a strange glow on his face. He looked up at John as he entered the room and sat on the edge of the bed. John reached out to Sherlock, hesitated, and then completed the gesture, resting his palm on Sherlock’s ankle. Just checking.

“Sorry,” he said, but didn’t move his hand away.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” scolded Sherlock gently. They’d had this conversation before.

John took a deep breath and smiled wearily. “But it’s irrational. I know you’re fine. I don’t need to touch you to know that.”

“Certainly it’s irrational. Nightmares are. What was it this time? No. Don’t tell me. If it’s not Afghanistan, it’s me.”

“Sometimes it’s going to my final exams and realising I’ve studied all the wrong textbooks,” suggested John with a shrug, “Or those ones when you’re at school and notice not only are you not in uniform, you’re actually naked.”

“I don’t have those dreams,” asserted Sherlock.

John grimaced. “You wouldn’t.”

“Usually mine are at Scotland Yard, and Anderson has stolen my coat. And I’m trying to cover myself with a pitifully thin file of unsolved murders.”

They snorted a laugh together at the notion of Sherlock having naked dreams at Scotland Yard. As they settled, Sherlock closed the lid of his laptop. “I haven’t tried to sleep,” he said, “Every time I close my eyes I hear Moriarty.”

“ _I’ll make you into shoes_ ,” said John carefully, “Yeah. Me too.” He sighed. “I suppose I’d better get back up to Mary.”

“You don’t have to.”

John patted Sherlock’s ankle. “No, I don’t.”

 _And_ , Sherlock thought, _he really would stay with me, if he thought that was what I needed._

“Don’t be an ass, John. Go back to Mary.” Before John could protest again, Sherlock swung his feet off the bed and he rose, pulling his blue robe on over his pyjamas as he left the room. John followed him back out to the living room, but waited to see what Sherlock was doing.

Sherlock went to his music stand and picked up his violin. “I’ll play for a while,” he said.

John took a breath, released it slowly. “That’d be nice.”

He sat on the sofa and closed his eyes, with his hands folded in front of him, and Sherlock played, a low, sweet tune. Gentle and calm, like water on the shore, full of swaying, sleepy flow.

Slowly, tension ebbed from John’s shoulders, and from Sherlock’s too.

“Go back to bed,” said Sherlock softly, still playing, “Get some sleep.”

John nodded. He rose and paused, watching Sherlock’s hands on the neck of the instrument, on the bow, as though meaning could be found in the movement of those long, strong fingers. “It’s not your fault, the dream I have of falling,” he said.

“It is,” said Sherlock, still playing.

“You did what had to be done.”

“Nevertheless.”

“You said you wanted to take it away. That dream.” Sherlock shrugged. “I just thought you should know… you do. When you play for me, and help me get back to sleep. At least, you give something better back. I wanted you to know.”

Sherlock’s hands stilled on the bow. He blinked at John. “Moriarty and his pet monsters are all dead or gone, and we won.”

“We did. You did.”

“We did. And now we have our lives to get on with. Nightmares be damned. Go back to bed, John. Mary is a more fitting bedfellow for you.”

“Maybe. But you’re all right too.” And with that, John grinned, squeezed Sherlock’s wrist with warmth and affection, and turned back up the stairs.

As he slipped back into bed with Mary, Sherlock was playing again, the same soothing, flowing melody.

Mary snuggled against him. “Everything okay now, babe?”

“Yeah. We’re all good.”

“Good.” Mary kissed his chest, his scarred shoulder, his jaw and his cheek. “If you need to go back down again, though, you go ahead. Do what you need to, beautiful.”

John wrapped his arms around her and held her close, kissing her forehead and hair. “No-one’s ever called me that before.”

“Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,” Mary murmured, rubbing her cheek against his chest. The warm skin and fine hair and the muscle. Her breath wafted warm over his nipple.

His body woke up. To her breath, to her body, to the life he and his dearest friend had won back at such an awful price from that lunatic and his deranged empire. John lifted Mary’s chin to kiss her, and she kissed him back and one thing led to another – a kiss to a caress, to hearts beating fast, and blood rushing and breath quickening.  

John unbuttoned Mary’s shirt slowly, kissing loving lines along exposed skin, and she slipped her hand past his waistband, pulling his pyjama pants past his hips, down to his knees, where he could kick them off, and then he was nestled between her thighs and she spread her legs so she could hold him with all of her self, arms and legs, stomach and breasts pressed up against his skin, while he ran his fingers through her fine hair and whispered her name and little endearments against her skin.

John kissed her, that nuzzling kiss she so loved, with his lips and cheeks and nose against her throat, her eyelids, her mouth, until she could capture his hot mouth with hers and their tongues twined as did their bodies.

With languorous care and sweet devotion, rhythm guided by the sweet music rising up from below, John’s body and Mary’s met and swayed and rolled, and on this rare occasion all but silent, their motion punctuated by little murmurs and sighs, mews and hums of pleasure, her legs around his hips, his hips rocking sweetly into her, penetrating, enveloped, soft-hard, wet-warm, held and holding, until her sudden gasp, and then his.

His hips rolled a little longer as he quietly chanted her name, forehead pressed to her cheek and then her throat. Finally, he was still, nestled against her, breathing her in as her hands stroked his back, his shoulders, his arms. _Beautiful,_ she was whispering to him. _Beautiful._

There were nightmares still, John knew, but there was this too. His dearest love here in his arms, not always, but enough, because he would never want to keep her free spirit trapped. And his dearest friend safe below, that great mind and incredible heart back where they belonged, home, here, in London. With him.

It was the best of all worlds in this new life they’d won and were building. It was going to be good, this life, John knew it. For him and for Sherlock, and for Mary and Nirupa too.

John kissed Mary all over her face, his grin morphing into a panting laugh. He collapsed back on the bed, all lassitude and elation, and Mary snuggled up close against his skin.

“He’s stopped playing,” she said.

“Man’s a genius,” John agreed, and with Mary holding him (and he her) he fell asleep again, and when he dreamed, they were good dreams filled with music.

*

Sherlock finished the violin piece and listened. The faintest rocking of the upstairs bed came to a halt and he couldn’t help a small smile. It wasn’t precisely the effect he’d been striving for, but he wasn’t displeased with it. More information than he really required, of course, but he was used to that.

This was the life he and John had won for themselves, after all.

With everything it had cost them, there had to be something else to balance it out. And this was it. His dearest friend safe above, with a woman who loved him, and could give to him all the things he deserved from life.

However John liked to paint it, Sherlock could never take away the nightmare of falling he’d given to him, but at least he could give John this too. Tonight, a melody to love by.

And, Sherlock thought, perhaps he was gaining something too. An engineer and an anthropologist, Mary had suggested, half in jest. But Sherlock liked Mary, and he liked Nirupa. _Not losing a friend but gaining two more,_ he allowed himself to think, here in the silent, safe darkness of his home.

Feeling strangely soothed by the piece he’d played, and its result, Sherlock put the violin back into its case and returned to his room. Instead of sitting sleepless and reading till dawn, he found that he could close his eyes and hear, not McCauley’s crawling voice, but only the music, the sway and flow and all the potential of this future he and John had claimed.

And when Sherlock dreamed, it was of being kissed by those who he now knew loved him – Greg and Molly, Mrs Hudson and of course John, and surprisingly now Mary and even Nirupa – and of growing green and lush, like a garden.

**Author's Note:**

> This story references We Think It's Love Love Love; Fighting for a Reason that We Can't Ignore; and the 221b about Sherlock's happy dreams, A Kiss to Build a Dream On.


End file.
